My Tango Diaries

I just read "The Disease Called Perfection" and the follow-up, "The Cure for Perfection" . If you can, take a few minutes and read them. I'll wait here, I promise. Back? Amazing concept isn't it? Almost subversive - stop the perfection disease. I promise this post is (at least a little bit) about tango. First of all because tango was the first challenge I faced where I was rewarded a quadrabajillion times over for being real, rather than being perfect. And then, when I wrote about it, I started finding so many other people feeling the same thing all over the world . When I started looking around at my life, my history, my world I could see, in some instances for the first time, what was really important. Tango changed everything because tango changed me . I know tango doesn't do that for everyone (though chances are pretty good if you're reading this). Maybe your church does this for you, or your bridge club, or your blogging group,

(from morguefile.com ) El duende has settled around my shoulders again, and it won't be shrugged off it seems. Almost a year ago I tried to explain to a friend what all this "duende" talk is about. A year later no easier to articulate. It's not a something , but the space between somethings . It's the emptiness that makes the non-emptiness so cherished. I wrote then how it was something I no longer sought out in tango. In the beginning of my tango journey, even before I was dancing, the duende in the music felt like some kind of romantic lure. It doesn't feel that way anymore. I don't really try to avoid it, because that's just not how it works. It comes when it comes, in the music, in a dance, in a breath. When I try to ignore it, it just loiters around until I notice it - or can't help noticing it. It's in the places, in slivers of space, where dark meets light. In contrasts and sharp edges. In that place you know suddenly quite clearly, th

(notice picture of the about-to-pounce cute kitten from Morguefile.com , so cute that you should instantly forgive the awkward actions of this wayward tanguera.) I did that thing I promised myself I wouldn't do. I practically pounced on a leader for a dance. (*hangs head in shame*) He doesn't come to milongas very often at all. And I did try to use my psychic ability eye contact, first. Really, I did. He was sitting on the far end of the dance floor, in very low light. So when I looked for a cabeceo from him, I couldn't exactly tell if I was making eye contact, or staring down a coat rack. (My vision is pretty bad - even with my glasses on.) I tried to nonchalantly pass by every so often - but we were both dancing a great deal and it was rare that he and I were both sitting at the same time. And he did write in his blog that it was okay to ask. Aaaand it was getting late. I panicked. Worst of all he was getting ready to pack it in when I finally got over to his table.

"Songs are born from memories, our own pains and from others; joy that we [have] not lived but someone lived with us; tears that we do not cry but someone cry near us. A song is a piece of life; a suit that is looking for a body to fit altogether well. The more bodies to be for that suit, the more success will have the song. Because if everybody sings it, is a signal that everybody lives it, feels it, suits it well." Enrique Santos Discepolo The things we do to avoid pain . . . Pema Chodron, in many of her writings, talks about the things we do to avoid pain - and why we do them. "Devaputra mara involves seeking pleasure. It works like this: when we feel embarrassed or awkward, when pain presents itself to us in any form whatsover, we run like crazy to try to become comfortable. Any obstacle we encounter has the power to completely pull the rug out, to completely pop the bubble of reality that we have to regard as secure and certain. When we are threatened that way, we

(Photo courtesy of morguefile.com ) I am still here. And I am still dancing. I am sorry for the long silence. It wasn't for lack of something to write, rather too many things all vying for attention and freedom. It was writer's block in the form of 'writer's bottleneck'. Too many things going on - in my job, in the world, in my head. Just too much. I had to take a couple of steps back and think about some things. One clear idea that has come from my step (or two, or three) back, is that tango returned me to my Buddhist practice. I don't say that lightly. No one could be more surprised by that than I am. I struggled for several years, off and on, with a frustrating and half-hearted practice. Never truly embracing the path . . . The problem with taking steps back from writing to look at things is that, while it gains perspective in some ways, it begins to cut one off from other perspectives. Other voices. For me, that silences the writing. I can't write